This so-called "sugar drink" will be made from urine using "forward osmosis" technology, and rather than providing astronauts with all the sugary nutrients they might need, it's been invented as a way to recycle human waste and keep rocket-ships light.

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Apparently a bag of urine can be turned into a sugary drink in just a couple of hours, using a syringe attached to the receptacle bag—a method which is cheaper than drawing power from the ship, as current urine filtration systems work.

While there's no way I would agree to drinking my own or fellow astronauts' urine, space crew of the future might not have a choice, where every pound of added weight equates to $10,000 of cost. The water conversion kit is accompanying the Atlantis space crew on a trip this Friday, but instead of using urine this time, they've lucked out—for now!—with Nasa supplying them with water bags instead. [Wired via Inhabitat]